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RD-900 Display Flickers when (trying) to fire up a zone.

History of my system.

Worked fine at the start of the year. Turned it off for a week for house repairs. Noticed last night that the system was not working.

Visual inspection.

When starting a zone or a full run on the system the LCD display flickers oddly and then acts as if the clock needs to be set. (time flashing). Trying to fire up a single zone does the same but rather then return to the clock flashing it just reports that the zone is off. This happens to all zones.

Trying a zone I can see that the MV and all zone valves seem to be receiving power yet ( can hear and see the cycloid motor move a bit) so wiring maybe ok.

Any ideas would be great, I would like to fix myself with out calling in someone.

I ran across three seperate RainDials this year that were acting bizzarly. One was doing exactly as you've described. The controller does work however via the programming but flickers wildly when operated manually. She's still using the controller because it seems to work and she never runs it manually. Time will tell. So i'm suggesting that there's a possibilty that your controller also may work via the programming and there's another reason the sprinklers don't come on. I do however suggest you replace the controller. You'll know for sure then if you have an additional problem.

You can try resetting the controller by unplugging it and taking out the back up battery.

Also make sure the faceplate is plugged in all the way to the circuit board.

Check and see if there's actually water at the valves. Sometimes painters or home repairmen will shut off the water so their work doesn't get wet and forget to turn it back on.

Running it programmed resulted in each zone BUZZING for the time set by the program. This had a hidden value to me, in that I now know the location of all my valves. Anyway are problems pointing more to the controller be broken or is the buzzing of each valve point to other problems. Maybe not enough power from the controller to open the valves?

When a zone starts the sprinklers go up and water for about a second and then they return underground with the valve buzzing. At the end of the same zone running they popup again and return before switching to the next zone.

To me it seems that the controller is not sending enough power to the valve for the duration of the run time.